


In Our Line Of Work

by Espoir



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Bleeding Out, Domestic, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Hurt!Eames, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Protective!Arthur, There's bleeding out and birthday cakes, h/c, surely this is the best of both worlds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-24
Updated: 2016-08-06
Packaged: 2018-07-26 10:25:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7570582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Espoir/pseuds/Espoir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“That’s not fair Eames, we’re not breaking up, you know it’s just-“</p><p>“A safety precaution, yeah yeah.”</p><p>Because he knows. They both do. ‘In our line of work...’ is one of Eames’ absolute least favourite phrases, but it’s also usually prelude to his least favourite truths. Truths like the fact that really, they both know they’re a disaster waiting to happen, that someday, probably not too far in the future, one of them will be used as leverage against the other and it’s going to fucking work, because they’re too far gone now, too invested, too emotionally attached and too stupidly in love-</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Ukrainian Roadtrip

**Author's Note:**

> This is a combination of two drabble-like pieces I wrote at very different times but I figured actually fit very well together in an established relationship sort of way. I just felt like sharing them really :)

“Fuck, bleeding buggering shitting  _fuck_.” 

Eames is in a fair amount of pain, pain that doesn’t have a hope of being numbed by hospital-strength painkillers anytime soon, so he’s planning on getting as much swearing as he can out of the way before Arthur gets huffy.

" _Shit_  god ow, fucking  _ow-"_

“Eames for god’s sake you’re not helping yourself here -” and well, there goes that then.

 Eames groans, leans back on the seat and tries not to move. Up front, Brandon pulls hard on the wheel, sending their jeep squealing out of the car park and onto the road, Eames skidding across the seat and barely staying on.

“Jesus,” he mutters, and closes his eyes against the wave of pain, so intense he’s seeing stars.

“Don’t be such a child, it barely touched you.” Eames thinks Arthur would sound a hell of a lot more impressive if his voice wasn’t shaking quite so much.

“Piss off Arthur, I know you got hit too.”

Arthur scoffs. “Yeah, and you don’t see me rolling around whining about it do you?”

Eames half-laughs, half-sobs and dares to blink open his eyes, glance down at his side where his dress-shirt is wet and clammy with blood.

“If you stop putting pressure on that thing so help me I’ll-“

“Alright,  _alright_ , c’mon give me a break here pet,” Eames protests and glances up at where Arthur is crouched in the footwell by his side, back pressed against Brandon's seat. He’s unhealthily pale, but more from shock than blood loss Eames suspects (hopes).

“Y’all alright back there?” Brandon calls over his shoulder, dropping the nasal German accent that’s been pissing Eames off for weeks on end for his standard Texan fare as easy as you please.

“Oh we’re peachy,” Arthur grits through his teeth, and Eames grins, because if Arthur still has the capacity for sarcasm he’s got to be alright.

He shuts his eyes again as another shuddering pulse of pain takes hold of him, rippling through his body, and Jesus, is it him or is the car spinning much more wildly than it should be-

“Eames,  _Eames_ \- fucking- don’t pass out on me –“ 

“Christ, but it  _hurts_  Arthur,” he mumbles. Or at least he thinks he does.

“Yeah I know, jackass, I was there when you stepped in front of a fucking  _rifle.”_  

“Yeah but it was a rifle s’was aimed a’you.” Oh now slurring can’t be good.

Arthur makes a pained noise, and Eames feels a hand, sticky and reeking of iron, land on his clavicle. He thinks it’s meant to be a caress, or at the very least a reassuring touch, but as it is Arthur just sort of pats him feebly.

“I know, fuck, you’re such an idiot, I honestly don't know how you've made it through life so far when you're so _completely_  irresponsible and-“

“How much blood are we talking back there?” Brandon hollers, and the car swerves hard again in a screech of tyres.

“Just fucking drive!” Arthur snarls and Eames eases his eyes open to look at the ceiling again.

“I jus’ got you back,” he says quietly.

Arthur’s face, stricken and even paler than before fills his vision. 

“What are you talking about? Jesus I can’t deal with it if you go delirious on me Eames-“

Eames smiles at him fondly. The pain is kind of fading now. 

“No, I mean, you jus’ got back.  _I_  got back. We were back together for like, 36 hours, tops.”

Because regardless of Eames bleeding out over the backseat of a jeep somewhere in the Ukrainian wilderness, they both know they’re going to have to split up because of this fuck up. Again.

Arthur’s expression crumples and he ducks his head to press a hard, bruising kiss on Eames' forehead.

“I know, it fucking sucks, but when we meet up again I swear we’re talking 2 months vacation  _minimum_.”

Eames nods, attempts a smile.

“Lookin’ forward to it.”

Arthur grins at him, lightning flash of dimples, and then presses his hands against Eames’ where he’s holding his jacket into his side. Or at least, Eames thinks he does. His hands are kind of numb at the minute. 

Bullets shatter the rear window and glass explodes onto them. Arthur swears violently in Ukrainian, and leans over Eames, shielding him from the falling shards. 

“Shit- Arthur! Give us a hand?”

Fucking Brandon.

Arthur doesn’t say anything but the next second he’s leaning over Eames, lining up a fucking  _machine gun,_  where does he procure these weapons from, it’s a wonder to Eames it really is, and is firing at the cars following them.

The pain is really fading now which is worrying Eames a tad if he’s honest, and he feels like he should probably let Arthur know. At some point. Maybe. In the meantime, he decides on giving up on holding his jacket against his side and lets his arm loll into the footwell. He’s tired. He’s tired and he’s missing Arthur already because he just got him back,  _just_  got his hands on him after 6 bloody weeks of lonely dark days and even lonelier nights, and Arthur doesn’t even know how much Eames misses him because they don’t talk about  _feelings_  like that, don’t talk about how much they are to each other or why Eames always sleeps on the right hand side of bed even when he’s on his own, or why Arthur has at least a draw, if not a whole cupboard, somewhere in all of his properties that is permanently full of Eames’ shit, or why neither of them have slept with anyone else for pushing two years now even though they’ve never  _said_  they were going to be exclusive-

Arthur’s face is suddenly in Eames vision again. 

“What  _are_  you talking about?” His mouth is twitching like he’s trying not to smile. And he says Eames is the one who is wildly inappropriate.

“It’s s’all true,” Eames says, or rather tries to say, because Arthur’s brow furrows like he didn’t quite catch that.

“Please let's not break up again,” Eames says, making sure to enunciate this time.

Arthur looks like he's caught halfway between wanting to punch him and wanting to cry.

“That’s not fair Eames, we’re not breaking up, you know it’s just-“

“A safety precaution, yeah yeah.”

Because he knows. They both do. ‘In our line of work…’ is one of Eames’ absolute  _least_  favourite phrases, but it’s also usually prelude to his least favourite truths. Truths like the fact that really, they both know they’re a disaster waiting to happen, that someday, probably not too far in the future, one of them will be used as leverage against the other and it’s going to fucking  _work_ , because they’re too far gone now, too invested, too emotionally attached and too stupidly in love-

Arthur’s laughing. Arthur’s white as sheet, blood dripping from a cut in his eyebrow from fucking flying glass, and he’s  _laughing_.

“Blood loss makes you so melodramatic,” he says by way of an explanation and has the decency to look mildly apologetic.

“Bastard,” Eames mutters, and closes his eyes again. “Fuck off and let me die in peace.” 

“Absolutely not,” says Arthur, somewhat primly, but then there are more cars to be shot at, so he presumably goes back to playing at being a black ops sniper.

Eames loses track a bit after that - he’s aware of the car swerving round a seemingly infinite number of corners, aware of Arthur running out of Ukrainian, German  _and_  French swear words and having to revert to Russian (his least favourite because he can’t say them with enough emphasis for his liking), aware of Brandon being shot at least twice if the shitty handling and furious shouts from the front seat are anything to go by-

\- Arthur’s hand on his cheek, shuddering warm breath over his lips-

_“Eames, c’mon, stay the fuck with me here-“_

\- Eames’ head rocks to the side because he can’t be bothered to keep it up anymore, he’s just so goddamned  _tired-_

_“Eames, Eames, for fuck’s sake, this is your own fucking fault jesus- can you even- Eames! Don’t make me use your Christian name, I will, I swear to god-“_

\- Arthur sounds sort of anxious now and Eames wants to reach up and pull him into a kiss, wants to rub his back because when Arthur’s voice gets all tight and pained like that it usually does  _shit_  to his back and then Eames will have to massage all the tension out of him  _again_ -

_“Eames? Shit- Brandon! Fuck the escape plan, we need a hospital now, he’s fading-“_

\- Eames always thought it was funny to say someone was fading. Imagined the colours of someone bleaching out, blending together, blurring with the background and slowly becoming more and more muted until they weren’t there anymore, nothing left behind but a shadow of a person that once was-

_“I’ll come back to you, I promise-“_

\- Eames thinks Arthur might be crying.

 

* * *

  

When Eames comes to, Brandon is the one sitting at his bedside. He looks exhausted and far older than his 26 years.

“Enjoyed your first tour of Europe then huh?” Eames croaks, internally horrified at how abused his voice sounds. How fucking long has he been out?

Brandon startles then rolls his eyes in a way that reminds Eames painfully of a certain point man.

“Sure yeah, you folks are real hospitable over here.” It mollifies Eames somewhat that Brandon sounds just as bad as him.

There’s a pause, as Eames shifts in the hospital bed, cataloguing his bandaged torso and fucked knee, checking for further damage. He’s not done too badly really, all things considering. 3 weeks taking it easy should allow most things to heal up-

“He’s gone you know,” Brandon says suddenly, quietly.

Eames looks up. “Who, Arthur? Oh I know.”

Brandon frowns, glances at the door. “You guys, uh, just seemed pretty close. He was pretty damn keen on getting you to the hospital when you passed out. Completely lost his shit when the first town we drove through didn’t have one.”

Eames smiles fondly. “Bless.”

“But he fucked off before you had chance to come to?” Brandon still sounds confused. “Doesn’t seem mighty generous of him.”

Eames wriggles slightly on stiff bed-sheets, trying to get comfy on a bed that feels like it’s missing a mattress. Eastern Europe is a lovely part of the world but fuck if their health care doesn’t leave a little to be desired.

“Occupational hazard. It wouldn’t do him or myself any favours if he were to weep by my bedside,” Eames says casually.

Brandon gets to his feet and presses something behind Eames’ head that shifts the bed into a vague sitting position. Eames nods at him gratefully.

“Still, that must suck.”

“Oh it sucks royally, believe you me. It needn’t be for too long though. A month at the most.”

Brandon looks sympathetic, and then uncomfortable. He eyes the door again.

Eames sighs. “I appreciate the bedside manner, but you can be on your way now too.”

“Really?”

“Really. Sensible thing to do after a job goes as south as this one. Split up. Make sure your client hasn’t put a hit out on you. Keep your head down.”

Brandon nods fervently. Eames half expects him to be taking notes. Oh to be young and an amateur.

“Well, I hope you feel better soon,” Brandon says jovially, and Eames absolutely does not snigger.

“Cheers,” he offers, and watches Brandon limp into the corridor.

The room is quiet without him.

Eames checks his phone, out of habit if anything, he knows there won’t be any messages, when it abruptly buzzes in his palm-

It’s from an unknown number.

_Seattle. 2 weeks. Fuck the rules, we made the fucking rules in the first place and they suck._

Eames grins so hard it hurts.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eames cocks the Heckler, and pokes his head round the corner into the living room.
> 
> It’s at this point Eames hears someone cussing, quietly and furiously, from behind the wall partition in the kitchen.

Eames doesn’t do waking up slowly.

He does unconscious to fully-aware-and-capable-of-operating-multiple-firearms-at-once in about half a second. The sleepy, lolling around and whining into the pillow thing he does on occasion is a complete act. Done mostly to piss off Arthur.

Today is such a day. One moment he’s out of the count, dead to the world, all and any other sleep related metaphors you fancy, and then he’s wide awake, even if his eyes are still closed.

He lies there for a second, before opening one eye to look at the alarm clock.

5:54 am.

Eames closes said-eye, frowns. Now that is odd. Unless he’s lost time, he _thought_ he and Arthur were in Eames’ modest little Brussels flat. He’s never been a huge fan of it if he’s honest, won in a bet and kept for convenience sake rather than anything else, but Arthur’s always been partial to Europe in the autumn, so here they are. Their unnameable, unknowable, and thus far, fucking brilliant, relationship still hanging undefined in the air between them.

Except it’s nearly a whole month off before Arthur needs to be in New York and Eames needs to be in Stockholm, and Eames knows they’re going to spend the entirety of it right here. Together.

Following that logic, and assuming he _is_ still currently enjoying a bit of a rest bite in Belgium, it is pretty odd indeed that he’s waking up before 9am.

Eames reaches out behind him, drops an arm into the space where by all accounts Arthur _should_ be, head a mess of unruly curls and drooling all over the pillow. His hand falls onto cooling sheets at an awkward angle.

“Arthur?” he tries, and then rolls over when that doesn’t get a response.

The bed is empty. Eames frowns even more. While _he_ might be a comfortable morning person if needs be, Arthur certainly isn’t, and apart from gun-wielding intruders and disgustingly early planes to catch, there’s not a whole lot of reasons why Arthur would be out of bed before 6am. On a Sunday. On their month off.

Eames absolutely does not panic, but he does roll out of bed and pick up his Heckler, flicking off the safety as he yawns.

It’s still dark out, obviously, so Eames relies on the fact he knows the layout of their bedroom pretty well and pads silently over to the door in bare feet avoiding crashing into anything. His knee twinges a little as it always does first thing. 5 months since he took a bullet in the Ukraine and it still bugs him.

He shoulders their bedroom door open quietly, gaze trained on the widening gap of light, but no masked robbers drop from the ceiling, so he pushes it fully open.

Making his way down the corridor to the living room, Eames slowly becomes aware of a really rather _awful_ smell. He scrunches his nose, pausing and rifling through his mental catalogue of various dangerous scents and gases he encountered with the SAS and coming up with nothing.

Eames cocks the Heckler, and pokes his head round the corner into the living room.

It’s at this point Eames hears someone cussing, quietly and furiously, from behind the wall partition in the kitchen.

He sighs, flicks the safety back on, and drops the gun onto the settee.

“Arthur, please tell me you’re not doing what I think you’re doing,” he calls.

Silence from the kitchen, followed by a muted crash, and even more swearing.

“Stay right the fuck there!”

Eames grins, flops into the armchair by the window and flicks the blind open to look out over Brussels’s rooftops. The sun isn’t even near up yet, but the sky is more muted navy than black at this point.

“Need a hand pet?” he calls again, trying not to let the grin get into his voice.

“Why the fuck are you even up?” Arthur sounds pissed, but not at him, so Eames relaxes.

“You weren’t in bed; I pine without you by my side.”

“Yeah, right.” Arthur sounds deeply unimpressed. He’s so difficult to romance, Eames thinks regretfully.

“I thought that sounded better than ‘the apartment smells like shit’”, Eames admits.

There’s a pause. Arthur sticks his head round the partition. He’s scowling, his hair is everywhere and he’s got flour streaked across his forehead.

Eames loves him impossibly.

“Does it?” Arthur sounds confused.

Eames raises an eyebrow. “Please tell me you are in fact aware of the smell of charred cinders emitting from what I can only assume is the oven. Unless you’ve managed to fuck up toast, which really _would_ be impressive-“

“BOLLOCKS”, Arthur yells, abruptly disappearing from view and Eames grins even more. Arthur hates admitting it, but of the two of them he’s far more susceptible to changing his accent, and his habit for picking up Eames’ liberally used English profanities as of late has been absolutely precious to witness.

“Shit, shit, shitting, fuck, _shit_ -“

“Remember that discussion we had about you cooking darling?” Eames starts, hauling himself to his feet, “And how you shouldn’t? Ever? I feel like now would be a good time to go over that again-“

“Eames if you don’t shut the _fuck up_ -“

Eames rounds the corner into the kitchen. The smell is overpowering, whatever identifiable cooking smell there had been overwhelmed by rolling black smoke billowing out from the open oven. Arthur is standing in the middle of the tiles, shirtless but wearing Eames’ ridiculous novelty apron, holding a smoking baking tin with one oven glove.

Eames wasn’t even aware that they _owned_ oven gloves.

At any rate, they don’t seem to be very good ones, because before Eames has time to say anything, Arthur is wincing, and then turning to dump the tin in the sink (still full of last night’s washing up water) where it hisses steam angrily.

Eames switches into action mode. “You get the window, I’ll get the fire alarm before all our neighbours _hate_ us and someone calls the bloody pompiers.”

Arthur lunges for the window as Eames kneels up on the counter and disconnects the white box on the ceiling before it can start screeching at them.

Arthur takes off his apron and starts fanning the oven helplessly, vaguely attempting to direct the smoke towards the open window. The November air is bitingly cold on Eames’ sleep-warm skin, and he grits his teeth, pulling his peacoat from its hook by the front door and shrugging it round his shoulders. Then he leans back against the counter and watches as Arthur swears over the smoke and peers into the sink at the tin.

“So. Cooking were we?” Eames offers.

“Well observed.” Arthur bites back and turns just so Eames can have the pleasure of seeing Arthur roll his eyes.

“Care to explain why? And at 6 in the morning? On a _Sunday_?”

“Believe me I’m asking myself the same question,” Arthur mutters, and drops the apron onto the side.

“I thought we’d agreed cooking was _my_ thing. For the sake of our health. And our kitchens’.”

Arthur sighs, grumbles something incoherent under his breath, and then shoves under Eames coat next to him, pushing his cold floury hands up Eames’ back and hiding his face in his chest.

“It doesn’t matter,” Arthur says, in a voice that’s quiet and has all the indicators that it in fact _does_ matter.

Eames wraps his arms around Arthur, and tucks his head under his chin.

“Now, now, we agreed to be communicative remember? New Year’s Resolution and all that. You can’t back out on me now. C’mon, fess up. What were you doing up and cooking at this ill-advised hour?”

Arthur mumbles something that sounds suspiciously like ‘Birthday cake’ and then tries kissing Eames’ jaw in what is so blatantly a distraction attempt that Eames is actually offended, because _excuse me-_

“I’m sorry, what was that?” he says, and pulls back to try and catch Arthur’s eye.

Arthur sighs and fixes Eames with a steely gaze.

“I was trying to bake you a birthday cake. For your birthday. Which is today. And I know you weren’t immediately aware of that because you’d forgotten about it as you do _every_ year, but _some of us_ actually look at the calendar once in a while and I thought seeing as it’s a nice number I’d do something a bit special but I underestimated how astonishingly _shit_ I am in the kitchen _again,_ so I fucked it up. I don’t know how I did but I did, and I’m sorry.”

Eames stares.

“You were… baking me a cake?”

“Attempting to.”

“Arthur this is about the most precious thing I think you’ve ever done and that _includes_ the time you killed Yuri Chernenkoff for me.”

The corner of Arthur’s mouth quirks in what threatens to be a smile. “You’re not going to let that go are you?”

“Absolutely not. It was the most romantic thing anyone’s ever done for me.”

Arthur tucks his head back into Eames’ neck, and kisses the underside of his jaw. If the slight tenderness is anything to go by, Eames is pretty sure Arthur gave him a hickey two nights ago in that exact spot, possessive bastard that he is.

“You are ridiculous.”

“Am I the one who woke up at god knows when to bake a cake, despite being _fully_ aware that I can’t cook? I don’t think so.”

“ _Jesus-“_

“What flavour was it? C’mon it’s soggy charcoal now so I’ll never know unless you tell me.”

“Red velvet,” Arthur says reluctantly.

Eames groans. “My _favourite_. I know they say it’s the thought that counts but _god_ I could’ve done with a slice of that-“

Arthur pinches Eames the side that Eames took a bullet too only 5 months ago. It twinges and Eames flinches, but Arthur’s grinning because he knows exactly what he’s doing and he’s _evil._

“Happy Birthday you ass.”

Eames drops a kiss on his forehead before Arthur can protest.

“Much appreciated love. Now would you mind _terribly_ if you put the kettle on, made me a cuppa and then came back to bed? Because that sounds like my kind of birthday.”

Arthur sniffs. “I guess I could manage that.”

“ _Excellent_.”

Eames puts his coat back on the hook, shivering as he does so, and then heads back to their room. He’s just about to flop back into the duvet when Arthur calls him from the kitchen-

“Eames?”

“Yes love?”

“Seeing as plan A for your birthday fucked up and we’re both awake, I’ll be moving onto plan B. So. Get naked.”

Eames grins, and shoves his head into the pillows.

That, he can manage.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes I need to take a break from angst, h/c and slow burn and sometimes this is what results <3


End file.
